Category: Social anxiety

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Holidays Social anxiety

Home From Home – Day 41 (end)

This is the last post in the series. In my next post I’ll return to what this blog was supposed to be about – writing and social anxiety. Not that this post has nothing to do with social anxiety….

***

Leaving the HP sauce behind (because D informed me that he found a source for the sauce), I carry my case and rucksack downstairs and have a quick breakfast before setting out. M2, in the last of many good deeds, is up and dressed, and she drives me to the station at some unearthly hour.

All the trains run to time, and I’m soon taking a last look at the back of the house I lived in for twenty years as my train whizzes past.

My mind is on my luggage, wondering whether it’ll pass the weight limit, when an El Al security person calls me over for the usual chat. You know, who packed your luggage, was it with you all the time. It’s very noisy in the airport, and I haven’t had much sleep. I’ve never had any trouble with the security check before, but this time, she’s worried. She says I seem hesitant.

I try to think of a normal-sounding excuse. “I haven’t spoken Hebrew for six weeks.” A bad idea. She wants to repeat the whole procedure in English. “No. I understood it all. I packed everything and it was with me all the time.”

Fortunately, she lets me go. Otherwise I might have had to mention the dreaded words: social anxiety.

And that’s it. My case weighs 20.2 kg, which is apparently OK. I heave my heavy rucksack onto my sleep-deprived body and follow all the usual procedures until I finally end up in the arms of D, who takes me back home. Because, while London and the other places feel very familiar, Jerusalem is my real home and I’m glad to be back.

Categories
Books Social anxiety

Creativity

I never used to think of myself as a creative person, yet here I am talking about creativity. Well – not here but over at Honest Speaks. Thanks for having me, Rachael!

Categories
Holidays Social anxiety

Home From Home – Day 38

You would expect two people who have got to know each other in an online forum to have plenty to say to each other. After all, they already know a lot about each other, and so they can continue to discuss actions, thoughts, feelings that they have written about on the forum. If they don’t happen to suffer from social anxiety.

Social anxiety sufferers, even those who are verbose in an online forum, can be very quiet in actual, face-to-face meetings. The pressure caused by the physical presence of another person causes them to forget what they wanted to say or worry so much about how and whether to express it that they end up keeping quiet. Well, not completely. They usually manage to talk, but their speech is often hesitant and sporadic.

I say “they”, but I can include myself in that, to varying degrees depending on external factors, and probably every other social anxiety sufferer to varying degrees depending on the person themself (is that a word, these days?) and on external factors.

So you can understand that when two social anxiety sufferers get together, the conversation doesn’t exactly flow. Each one struggles with inner thoughts and worries, and neither is able to make up for the lack of input from the other side.

S and I have met at least three times before. Each time, we spent a few hours together and struggled to keep the conversation going. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the experience. I did. But when it was over, I heaved a sigh of relief from the absence of pressure.

This time is different; we have more of an agenda. We’re at the boat show in Southampton, a most impressive array of yachts and other boats. The weather is glorious, and we spend our time seeing how the rich live, driving yachts,

(I wish), examining fish in a marine research boat:

and watching a freight ship (or whatever it’s called):

Conversation isn’t so necessary, and so it comes more naturally, mostly spawned by the things we see.

We have lunch under the sun in the dining area – fish and chips. And visit the tourist shops on the way out. In all, a very pleasant day.

In the evening, I see a TV programme about Vera Lynn. She’s 92 and seems very active and alert. Good for her! She is interviewed by David Frost, who doesn’t look all that young himself!

Categories
Holidays Social anxiety

Home From Home – Day 34

For anyone who is still confused, I returned home from my holiday over two months ago. The present tense of this narrative is not supposed to imply that it takes place in the present time.

***

I have met several social anxiety sufferers over the years since discovering the disorder. Some are extremely quiet and reserved. Others are warm and bubbly; you wouldn’t know the problems that hide below the surface. P is somewhere in between. I meet him for the first time in his home town of Southampton and we spend most of the day together. He apologises for himself and for the town (which I’ve never visited before), but really he has nothing to apologise for and I enjoy my day out.

We visit an art gallery, which includes pictures of famous writers, and we walk along the remaining walls of the city. The walls are not quite as impressive as those of Jerusalem, or of Chester which I visited once, but, knowing nothing about the history of Southampton, I’m interested to see a little of it. We even spot the mayor of Southampton, by chance, talking in a shopping centre.

P is the only person I meet on my trip who thinks – or owns up to thinking – that I have a foreign accent. Crikey! I know I’ve been out of the country for a long time, but still….

Categories
Holidays Social anxiety

Home From Home – Day 18

This is taking too long. It’s now two months since I returned home and my blog is still on holiday. So I’m going to post every day until it’s finished. Well, that’s the plan anyway….

***

I say goodbye to M1, who has been so good to me, take a train to Euston Station and walk to St Pancras Station dragging my suitcase with me. I’m sure those mounds on the pavement at each crossing are useful to some, but they’re quite a nuisance when you’re wheeling a suitcase. It takes me some time to discover I’m in King’s Cross and not St Pancras. While I’m waiting at the information desk to ask, “Sorry for the stupid question, but where is Starbucks?”, I notice that one of the staff’s jobs is to help elderly/infirm people to get to their platforms. I’m impressed.

Fortunately, I’m still on time for my meeting with Cathy Walter, who turns out to be a friendly, warm person and very pleasant to chat to – even for me. The two hours we spend together fly by. She says she wouldn’t have known I had a problem and that causes mixed feelings. I’m happy that I’m managing to keep up my side of the conversation. And I wonder if I come over as a fraud. The fact is that I behave differently with different people, and Cathy is very easy to talk to. Also, I’m generally more at ease with strangers because they don’t have preconceived opinions of me. Most people with social anxiety are just the opposite and are most scared of talking to strangers.

Then I meet my eighteen-year-old daughter, who has been visiting Paris and London with a friend. I’m amazed how well she has coped. She gives me a music box with my favourite French tune, one that brings back pleasant memories:



I don’t want to arrive at my cousins’ house too early and I don’t want to wander around any more with my suitcase. So I sit in the station and watch people and wheeled articles going past. Of all the things we used to manage without – mobile phones, laptops, electric kettles that lift off the part connected to the electric point – wheeled suitcases are the most unfathomable. Surely the technology was available to put wheels on suitcases fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, and more. I also see wheelie bins in a line, pulled by a man in a vehicle. They remind me of a line of ducklings following their mother.

My cousins are pleased to see me and tell me the plans for the next three days.

Categories
Social anxiety

Unbelievable

To tell you the truth, I’m having a hard time believing my last post but one. Yes, we’re all different. Yes, some people are better at some things while others are better at others. But there are certain things that everyone’s expected to be able to do.

It’s OK to say you can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t walk. But can’t talk? Everyone’s supposed to be able to talk, unless some physical disability prevents it.

All right, I talk. But sometimes I dry up, sometimes I don’t express myself well enough to be understood, and sometimes, in a group, I don’t join in for fear of drawing attention to my shortcomings. And when one of those things happens, my mood drops as eyebrows are raised, and I don’t feel at all proud of being me. Sorry.

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Social anxiety

Understanding motivations

People are complicated. It’s often hard to understand why they behave in certain ways. Sometimes, it’s hard to understand your own behaviour. I’ve often failed to understand my reactions, although, as I get older and (hopefully) wiser, things are becoming clearer.

Cat of Daily Improvements wrote about people who behave out of character and about her own lapses when talking to officials. Many people will be surprised to learn that I also occasionally break out of my normal reserve and shout at people – strangers – including some who really don’t deserve such treatment. For years, I didn’t understand why I did this. Now I know that it’s my way of turning off social anxiety. Like Cat, I’m not proud of losing my temper in this way, but I understand where it comes from. My poor victims don’t understand.

Cat says she’s going to “try and be more aware of the motivations of other people and the mitigating factors that might explain their behaviour.” That’s good advice for anyone, but often it’s impossible to know what motivates others. We just have to be aware that everyone has motivations, and often things ain’t what they seem.

Categories
Social anxiety

I’m probably over-reacting, but…

As far as I know, there was only one time in my adult life that someone decided not to talk to me. The situation lasted for two weeks, during which I was devastated. Why? Probably because in my childhood it was a regular occurrence for me to be sent to Coventry. Because even when this was not the case, I was mostly ignored. When I wasn’t ignored I was mostly made fun of, and yet this was preferable. For me, loneliness was harder than being bullied, and not being spoken to has remained the worst thing anyone can do to me.

When, a few days ago, someone unfriended me on Facebook, it felt just the same. Even though I’ve never met this person. Even though, as I’ve been told, this is a common occurrence on Facebook. This was someone I had “talked” to quite a lot, someone who had always been friendly up to then.

At first, I could only guess at the reason. Later, through a mutual friend, my suspicions were confirmed, although I still don’t understand it completely. I’m hoping that this rift won’t last long either.

Friends, on- or offline, don’t always agree with each other. They can discuss their differences or agree to differ. Breaking off the friendship seems very drastic, even on Facebook. To me, anyway.

Categories
Social anxiety

How do you react when people think you’re incapable?

As a child at school, I’d get laughed at for things I said or did. At first, it was probably no more than any child would get from other children. But for some reason – maybe because I wasn’t used to the way children treat each other – I took it personally. And for some reason, because they all laughed at me – or so it seemed – I thought they must be right, that there must be something wrong with me. For some reason, I started saying or doing things I knew they’d laugh at, just because they expected it from me.

Now, an exceedingly large number of years later, I’m still doing it. No, I don’t get laughed at any more, but people think I’m incapable of doing things and I perpetuate that notion. This came to the foreground recently, when people – nice people – clearly felt that I couldn’t cook, or clear up, or ask a stranger a question, or drive. And instead of showing them that I could do these things, I let them carry on thinking what they thought and even said and did things to make them more sure of their view of me. (Except when it came to driving; I didn’t want to cause an accident!) Why? Because if that’s what they think, they must be right. That’s how my mind works. That’s how I’ve always reacted. Unintentionally.

It’s hard to change the habits of a lifetime, but I’m going to try, because I’ve had enough. Because they’re wrong and I need to show them that.

So how do you react when people think you’re incapable? Or doesn’t that happen to you?

Categories
Blogging Social anxiety

Did I give you the wrong impression?

If I did, please tell me. One of the reasons why I write is that it’s the only way I know of explaining and getting my message across without being misunderstood. So if I’ve written anything misleading, I want to know so that I can correct my error. I think I can do that.

What triggered this question was an email. Being an expert at guessing other people’s thoughts (which is the essence of a good SAer*), I’m wondering if this is what my readers think I’m asserting:

*SAer: someone who suffers from social anxiety.

We SAers belong to this elite of perfect people who always act in the right way, especially when regarding other people’s feelings. If everyone behaved as we do, everything would be fine. Unfortunately, non-SAers are bad people who don’t give a damn about messing with our feelings and have caused us to suffer.

NOOOO! I’ve never said that or thought that or intended anyone to understand that. And I hasten to add that the email writer didn’t say that either. I’m exaggerating slightly… like maybe 2000%.

So this is what I want to make clear: SAers are just human beings like everyone else and come in many different varieties with different opinions, thoughts and feelings. You can see this on SA forums where members argue and get upset and even leave the forum due to the behaviour of other members.

And non-SAers are also nice, nasty and mediocre. In fact, some of my best friends are non-SAers.